Tuesday, November 23, 2010

As weannounced yesterday (and Henne did 90% of the work, btw), Novell is probably going to be acquired. Yes, probably, it's not a done deal yet, but is probably what is going to happen.

Now, my very personal 2 cents about it. Not the view of the entire openSUSE board, just me, from my very own experience and feelings.

So it's random conspiracy time again, not like we haven't been there before, did we (just google for "Novell Microsoft deal" and look at all those doomsday scenarios).

Actually I don't even want to comment on those theories. They may be founded, they might not. Most people usually get it wrong. And I'm not so sure about most tech journalists either. Anyway, I just wanted to say that hey, acquisitions come and go, software patents suck (and not just for FOSS, but for the whole IT industry and, through that, for most people on the planet -- yes, for you too, whoever you are). As stated, for now, it's business as usual for us, the openSUSE community. We don't see any reason to go wild and panic right now. Let's wait and see. There might be a very positive outcome, just as it could be doomsday. But we'll all keep on living and have fun, one way or the other.

Right now, no one knows anything. Attachmate's announcement so far seems encouraging, and I believe they need a fair chance. There is no point always looking for the worst in everyone. Oh, and whoever works for a larger corporation, be it in IT or not, knows that a business is not a living creature with a "big plan", moving into a single direction (that's even true of Microsoft, incidentally). So let's not get paranoid here.

I understand the concerns, and for obvious reasons (uncertainty), I can't say that I'm 100% relaxed at this point, but there is really no foundation for going into any theory.

After all, we, the openSUSE community, have big plans, and we're slowly emerging from a phase of introspection (which is a very positive thing, unlike what some have been writing). The community and Novell have been moving at different paces for quite some time, from the launch of openSUSE.org and now, and it's only normal that at the point where we've reached quite a lot of (common) objectives, such as opening up and lifting most if not all barriers to non-Novell employees to directly contribute to the project and distribution, we need to sit back a little and think about what we need to tackle next.

From the feedback we received from our contributors, and pretty much our own assessment too, we need to concentrate more on the community / non-technical aspects right now. Which is why we've been and still are working on a strategy, on a non-for-profit/foundation, and a few other things (such as improving our communication and reducing the rather confusing abundance of too loosely connected communication channels).

So let's just focus on what we do have influence on, and that's getting involved into the project, contributing ideas, time, skills and love into making this an even better place for people to interact and contribute, and of course continuously improving (Kaizen!) our distribution and its technical infrastructure too.

We are of course looking forward to getting in touch with people from Attachmate, at all levels, and give them an honest and fair chance to become our next major supporter, in return for a solid and vibrant foundation for high quality enterprise products. Not that it's our main goal, but a cooperation where everyone wins.

Thank you for those well balanced words coming from you. Not speculative no future vision or divining thoughts just an insight what we are as community and what we can offer, strengths, opportunity areas and some drawbacks on the path to grow up.